DRILL! DRILL! DRILL!

New Krugman. From the New York Times:

Know-Nothing Politics

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: “The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,” said Representative John Shadegg.

What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be “insignificant”? Presumably they’re just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, “want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs.”

Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Don’t count on it.

And

Sad to say, the current drill-and-burn campaign is getting some political traction. According to one recent poll, 69 percent of Americans now favor expanded offshore drilling — and 51 percent of them believe that removing restrictions on drilling would reduce gas prices within a year.

More here.

Yeah, that last bit there, that a large majority of the country believes we can drill our way out of this mess, has been particularly distressing to me these last few days. I mean, Krugman puts it all in terms of how the GOP is yanking people's chains, but if I understand correctly, even Obama has jumped on the drilling bandwagon. And he fucking knows better.

It's not like the problems with drilling are any big secret, either. I've heard from several major news sources, television news sources like CNN and ABC, that economists are pretty much united in their assertion that new drilling won't produce any actual oil for at least a decade, and even then the amount produced will be negligible in terms of affecting global oil prices. This is common knowledge if you watch the news--you don't even have to read, for god's sake! All that new drilling will do is enrich the multi-national oil corporations, which explains why the GOP would be pushing it; after all, they've been pushing it for some years now, anyway.

But why the fuck are average Americans buying such major bullshit? I mean, who are these Americans, anyway? Nobody I know is talking about how important it is to drill our way out of the gas crisis--that probably has more to do with the fact that most of the people in my daily life at the moment are largely apolitical, without much of an opinion on gas prices other than that they suck. Actually, now that I think about it, that's probably most of the problem right there: most Americans are apolitical, and wildly uninformed about, well, everything. Ask somebody who hates paying four bucks a gallon if drilling for more oil is a good idea, he'll probably say "shit yeah!" Divorced from any real context, without knowledge that the entire economics profession nixes the idea as having any benefit, I'd probably say the same thing myself. Not enough oil? Go out and fucking get us some more! Right the fuck now!

The Republicans have been taking advantage of America's ignorance and apolitical spirit for many years - think about the notion of cutting taxes magically resulting in increased tax revenue because of tax cutting's magic stimulus effect - but this kind of bullshit appears to be new for Democrats. I suppose President McChange sees that nothing succeeds like success, and like the earlier Democrat Good Vibe POTUS, Elvis Clinton, is now cribbing plays from the GOP book.

That is, when Obama, in discussing soaring gas prices, says we need more domestic drilling, he's lying. The revolution of "change" is already over.

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